Snippet #2763560

"Not my day yet, it would seem," Girthfield said. He nodded at Otis before turning toward the ruins of the ship. "But we're not done here yet."

They weren't. Only three scavengers lay incapacitated next to the ruined ship, and fourteen ants stood among them. Longs were ropes tied to their saddles.

Girthfield lifted one of the ropes, three strands, hand-woven. Strong and tied with a sailor's knot. He followed it toward the growing pond of steam water at the ripped open hull of the ship. The vessel was massive. Even bent and deformed it towered over him almost four storeys. It was, at one point, a long-vessel, before being twisted and blackened beyond recognition. A narrow bow, where the command deck of the ship was located, opposite a wide stern, now cracked open like an egg.

Girthfield held onto the rope. "Into the breach," he said, turning to his apprentice with a smile. Otis grabbed hold of the rope and trailed Girthfield. In unison the two men followed the rope into the pitch black opening of the hull. And the darkness consumed them. It felt as though they had entered a cave of metal.

Each step they took they could hear metal bend beneath them, rushing water washing their ankles as they moved through the dark. Suddenly, a hit- metal bar, hanging low enough to club both Otis & Girthfield in the head. "Shit," Girthfield swore. In the darkness he felt out his pocket matchbox. "Light... let's have... some... light."

The flame flickered to reveal a body standing before them, screaming- though now mummified in fire and ash. They stood in what was once a mess hall. The walls were twisted and scorched. Across the room there were more bodies. Some had melted into tables, some into the walls, others had collapsed in on themselves and had begun to flush away with the stream of engine water.

Girthfield swallowed at the sight. "No one in the stern of this ship survived the blast," He concluded after a moment, looking over the hall of death. "I count... twenty-three corpses."

"Alrighty, come on now! Before we drown..."

"Dadgum!"

Voices echoed. The rope Girthfield and Otis held was tugged suddenly. From the fire light they could see it and the other ropes trailed through a burnt doorway, deeper into the ship.

"If we tied it around this right here we can drag 'em out."

"Blow a wall maybe? I don't hear them gunshots no more, bet Larl and the others secured the area."

The voices grew louder. Lantern glow came into view as the two guardians further followed the ropes. Around a corner they went before stopping and taking in the sight. Before them a reinforced chamber stretched, reaching up to the full four-storeys of the hull. Crates once neatly stacked now lay shattered on the ground of the enclosure, food and fine goods scattered and broken. Among the debris a few dead crew-members lay. Unburnt, like everything else in the chamber, and instead bloodied by impact. They were wearing black Matranical uniforms.

But the ruined goods were not the purpose of this chamber. They were set dressing. The centrepiece was the towering machinery stretching forty-feet above them, nearly to the top of the chamber. A huge base, black bolts securing heavy metal. Treaded wheels of iron, ladders haphazardly leading up to a loading platform, an aiming chamber, and it's own engine, protected by an overhead shield twice the size of a man, all beneath a twenty-foot barrel. It must have weighed over thirty tons. And, without a doubt, it was the largest gun Otis or Girthfield had ever seen. It was also what the scavengers had discovered, the remaining dozen in sight, tying their ropes around every corner of it they could find... no doubt hoping their combined ant-power was enough to drag the machine out. Somehow, Girthfield doubted it would be. It was a giant. A single bullet must be able to blow a man's body off from the feet up. It was a mortar to end all mortars. A fury of industry. The artillery to end a cruiser from miles away. It was... it was.

"The sceptre..." Palavan spoke weakly.

"Otis, one of them lives," Girthfield said as they watched. A uniformed woman lay bleeding at the base of the artillery, her body amongst the smashed goods.

"Someone shut 'er up!" A bucked tooth scavenger yelled as she furiously tried to tie her rope around a wheel of the gun.

"Eh, maybe we should ask her what it is," One said from beneath a sand-covered bandana.

"Maybe we should shoot her and get rid of the whining."